13 September 2018 - Australian Artist's Cartoon of Serena Williams Condemned as Racist

Publié
par
Marion Coste
le 13/09/2018

Serena Williams cartoon called racist

(CNN, 11/09/2018)

A cartoon depicting US tennis player Serena Williams published in an Australian newspaper is being called racist by critics, but the newspaper's editor and the artist who drew it are defending publishing it.

A cartoon of Serena Williams that has been widely condemned as a racist depiction of the tennis great has been partially reprinted on the front page of the Melbourne-based newspaper that initially published it.

The Herald Sun newspaper printed an edited portion of the cartoon -- featuring 23-time Grand Slam winner Williams jumping on a broken racket during her dispute with a chair umpire during the US Open final -- among caricatures of other famous people Wednesday under the headline "Welcome to PC World."

The newspaper, which has Australia's largest circulation, has defended its cartoonist Mark Knight's depiction of Williams and is asserting that the condemnation, which has come from all parts of the world, is driven by political correctness.

Serena Williams cartoon: outrage-mongering or old-fashioned racism?

Jennifer O'Connell (The Irish Times, 11/09/2018)

Look at this cartoon. What do you see: a clever bit of satire, poking fun at a tennis legend’s petulant behaviour; or an image with dark resonances of another era, when black people were routinely depicted as less than human and when assertive women were regarded as hysterical?

The cartoon, published in the Melbourne-based Herald Sun – which is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp – renders Serena Williams in a full-blown tantrum, jumping up and down on her racket, her face contorted until it looks more animal than human.

The image has provoked an instant storm on social media, and been widely condemned as racist and sexist. Observers have drawn attention to its depiction of Williams’s facial features and pose, and the bizarre portrayal of her opponent in the final of the US Open, Naomi Osaka, who is Haitian-Japanese, as a blond white woman.

If you follow tennis or Twitter, at all, you’ve probably seen the cartoon showing Serena Williams stomping on her racket in her United States Open loss on Saturday, with her features exaggerated into a caricature.

It’s a product of Australia — from The Herald Sun, a tabloid in Melbourne owned by Rupert Murdoch. And it has set off an international storm of outrage, with athletes, fans and even J.K. Rowling denouncing the cartoon as sexist and racist.